checkmate
by lydiamaartin
Summary: If she were in the history books, this night would mark her downfall. Knocking on his door that night was her first wrong move. - JasonAria


**disclaimer:** nothing you recognize is mine.

**warnings:** contains spoilers for s3, and also works on the theory that aria is a and that ezra will break up with her over the baby drama.

* * *

_you're not as brave as you were at the start._

-:-

Rosewood is hauntingly still at night. Aria stays up late too often lately, counting stars and memories by her windowsill, remembering the days when she had thought that Rosewood's peacefulness meant her happiness. All it really means these days is loneliness.

She glances over her shoulder at her three best friends, all spread out across the floor of Spencer's bedroom, limbs entangled and hair everywhere, all of them fast asleep. It's almost midnight, but she can't sleep for more reasons than one, and she's waiting for the vibration she knows is coming.

(It still makes her jump.)

She doesn't have to snoop around to know what the text lighting up Spencer's phone is saying. _The course of true love never did run smooth, did it, Spencer? – A_. In the morning, Spencer will wake and see it and maybe throw her phone against a wall or sob or possibly simply collapse.

Times like these, Aria finds herself wondering how it's so effortlessly possible to not know the people closest to your heart.

-:-

She wanders out of the Hastings house some time around one in the morning after grabbing her coat from where she'd thrown it haphazardly in the chaos that was yesterday. Truth be told, she can't remember most of it, and she's deleted all the texts that could remind her.

_Aria, come quickly!_

_It's Spencer, it's an emergency!_

_Aria, it's Toby._

The ghost of the adrenaline that had pumped through her veins last night returns at the memories. Aria takes a deep breath, closing her eyes for a second against the light of streetlamps, and reminds herself to take it slow. Precision is everything in a game as dangerous as the one she's playing, and she can't afford one wrong move, not now, not ever.

Involuntarily, her feet lead her right to the house next door. (Perhaps that was the first wrong move, or maybe it was the last.)

-:-

Aria's not entirely sure why she knocks on the door. There's nothing for her inside, she knows that, and she has never been one to act without knowing there's something to be gained. That's not how you play this game, and that's not how you win.

But she knocks anyway, and the door opens.

"Aria," says Jason, her name lingering on his lips like a prayer. "What are you doing here?"

"I – " She feels as though she's been caught speechless far too often these days. It's not exactly a feeling she enjoys, but when she's looking at Jason, all the eloquent words swimming in her mind vanished into the wind, the same way her hope for a happy ending had vanished when she'd moved back to Rosewood.

Jason crosses his arms across his chest, and the part of her that still likes to think about normal teenage girl things takes a moment to appreciate the fact that he's shirtless. The rest of her, the parts caught up in this deadly game of chess, want only to spin lies and run away. Around Jason, she's never sure which part is dominant.

"Did you need something, Aria?" he presses, his voice almost gentle, but she can feel the truth heavy beneath his words. Her mind is chanting _HE KNOWS HE KNOWS HE KNOWS_ and she has never wished harder to disappear in her life.

"Yes." The word spills out of her like sand through her fingers. She can feel her eyes widen in alarm – _this is not how you play, this is not how you win_ – but it's too late to snatch it back. Jason shifts his weight.

"Aria," he says firmly when she can't find it in her to say anything else. "What do you need from me?" And his tone of voice is so resigned, it makes her want to scream.

"I'm not the girl you think I am," she finds herself saying, too quickly to stop herself, and Jason goes still. She feels a shiver dance down her spine, and it's only partly from the chill of the evening.

"Aria," he says again, but this time her name is a lost cause, as hopeless as her games, "I think you're _exactly_ the girl I think you are," and she's about ready to run away, but then he steps aside and opens the door wider.

"I'll make you some coffee," he tells her, his voice so soft as it touches her bones that she can hardly breathe. Nothing about this night has gone the way she planned, so she takes a breath and tries not to break, and then she steps inside.

-:-

There's a mug of steaming hot black coffee warm between her hands and Jason got a shirt on now but he hasn't looked at her once. The atmosphere is so heavy it feels like the whole world is pressing down on her shoulders, and there's a part of her that wants to go home, curl up in her bed, and dream of a time before the lies. But his coffee is good and his presence gives her an odd sort of comfort, so Aria stays and tries to find the courage to break the silence.

He beats her to it. "Are you going to tell me why you're really here?"

She freezes in her seat, her hands still cupped around her coffee, and feels her heart start to beat far too fast for her comfort. "You already know, don't you?" she says, keeping her breathing steady and her façade securely in place. It's harder than it used to be.

Jason braces his palms on the countertop that separates them and leans over until she has to look up at him. "Aria," he says, and half of her wants him to stop saying her name and the other half wishes he would never stop, "stop playing your stupid games with me."

Aria bites her lip and tilts her head, feeling herself regain the confidence that had catapulted her into the heart of this maze of lies in the first place. Maybe it's the anger she can see in his eyes. She can deal with anger. She knows how to win this game.

"This isn't a game," she lies easily, and lifts her mug to her mouth to hide her smile. "Although, if you'd like to play – "

"_No_," he snaps, and she might not admit it, but he makes her jump in her seat. "Aria… she's my _sister_."

Something indefinable unfurls in her stomach, white-hot and burning, and she slams her coffee down, spilling some onto the counter. Jason doesn't even blink.

"You don't _know_ her, Jason," she says, feeling her hands curl into fists around the fabric of her dress. "You don't know _anything_ about her!"

"She's still my sister," he says quietly, and Aria feels another part of her, the part she likes to keep submerged beneath lies and games, break at the heartache in his eyes. "And Aria – I do know _you_."

"No, you don't," she whispers, feeling herself start to shake. His gaze, still steady on her, has softened to the point that he's looking at her like he used to, once upon a time, before Mona, before Toby, before Spencer, and it makes her want to cry or scream or maybe just give up.

"Aria," he says, his voice unbearably tender around the shape of her name, and then he's on the other side of the counter and she's still shaking and he's holding her so close she feels like she could melt into his arms and never leave. This might be what the truth feels like, but she has no way to be sure.

-:-

"Why are you doing this to yourself?" he breathes into her hair an hour later, once her coffee is finished and he's got an old Disney movie of Alison's playing on mute as they sit together on the couch in a silence that's halfway between comfortable and cautious.

"I'm not doing it to myself," she insists, looking down at the terribly uninteresting pattern of her dress rather than up into his eyes. "Nothing happens to me, Jason. It happens to everyone around me."

"I know that," he says steadily, and she can feel his breath ghosting lightly across her cheek. "That's the lie you tell yourself before you go to sleep at night."

Aria wants to tense up at the way his words cut right through her shields, but his hands are far too warm around her. "That's – that's not true," she tries, and she wishes she could let herself break apart.

"I think you should know the difference between lies and truths by now," he murmurs, and though every rational part of her is fighting against the urge, she lets her head drop onto his chest and her breaths ease with his every heartbeat beneath her.

Jason chuckles, though there's not a lot of humor in the sound. "If you don't want to talk about that," he says after another silence that stretches almost too long, "care to tell me what's going on with you and Ezra?"

"Oh." Aria shifts into a more comfortable position. This is an easier subject. "He broke up with me. Because of – well, there was this thing with his son that he didn't know about, and I knew but I didn't tell him, and then he got angry."

She surprises herself with how matter-of-fact her delivery is. Although she hadn't actually cried over the loss of Ezra like the girls believed she had, it had stung a little. She had gotten too used to Ezra being in the background of her life. And yet now, with Jason, the thought of Ezra seems like forever ago, like another life, or maybe the dream of another life.

"I'm sorry," he offers as sincerely as he possibly can. Aria doesn't reply because there's not really much to say on the topic, and instead buries her face in his shirt and inhales the scent of freshly clean clothes and his woodsy cologne.

He's the first to break the silence again. "Aria, what would you do for Mike?" The question is so startingly simple that she has to pause to think about it.

"A lot of things," she says finally, the words rolling slow off her tongue, "almost anything. Why?"

She looks up in time to catch the sad smile he gives her. "I would do the same for Spencer, you know," and she sighs and looks away again.

"You don't understand," she says in a voice far smaller than hers usually is. "It's – it's complicated, Jason, and it's a mess, I know that, but I – I'm not actually going to – "

"I know," he says simply, and when he catches her eye, she's hit with the overwhelming urge to kiss him. (Later, she looks back and thinks that if she were in the history books, this night would mark her downfall.)

-:-

When she awakens in the morning, dawn has hardly broken and she is still sleepy, covered only by his bedsheets, and the first thing she sees is Spencer standing in the doorway. (The second thing she sees is Jason, half-dressed and sitting in bed next to her, and the third is Hanna and Emily behind Spencer. There is no time for a fourth.)

"Aria," says Spencer slowly, and they might be siblings, but her name sounds completely different on Spencer's lips. "What are you doing here?"

Aria feels a vague sense of déjà vu before she gathers her wits and remembers where she is. "I – I just – " And she had a line from one of her scripts all ready to go, but one look at Jason, still shirtless with his hair still mussed from where she had run her hands through it last night, makes all the words disappear.

"Did you guys – " Hanna begins to say before being quickly hushed by Emily, who has already noticed the way Spencer's eyes are narrowing in on Jason and Aria.

"Um, Spence, can you…?" Jason makes a gesture that could probably mean a lot of different things, but Spencer seems to understand, because she rolls her eyes.

"Yeah, sure," she says, and turns around to walk out, Hanna and Emily trailing behind her as they shoot uncertain looks over their shoulder back into the bedroom. Spencer's steps are decidedly harder than they should be.

As soon as the door closes behind her friends, Aria finds herself unable to stop from dissolving into helpless giggles. She sits up in bed, clutching the sheets closer around her, and laughs until she feels sick. Jason watches her with a kind of wistful smile on his face until she finally feels her laughter ease.

"I'm sorry," she begins, though the smile stretching her cheeks still makes her feel like a little girl. "I shouldn't – I don't know why I'm laughing."

"I do," he says easily, twisting around and clambering back into bed properly. "You miss worrying about stuff like this, don't you? About stupid stuff, like boys and sex and drama."

Aria lets him settle comfortably around her before she smiles and says, "There's nothing stupid about you," and he laughs and kisses her like everything could maybe all right one day.

-:-

By the time she leaves his bedroom, fully dressed and mask in place, Spencer has calmed down significantly, though she doesn't exactly smile when Aria approaches. It's Hanna who starts detailing their latest plan to survive another storm of media attention and the A-related horror that's sure to ensue now that Toby has been caught, and Aria listens quietly and nods her head and asks all the right questions in all the right spots as they walk back to Spencer's house.

She can't resist risking one glance back at the Dilaurentis house, though, and the girls may not notice, but her whole body is still burning with the memory of last night. All the stars are gone from the sky almost as quickly as they came, but she still remembers their light through his window as he kissed her so gently she could have stopped breathing and never even noticed.

Hanna and Emily head to the kitchen to get some food for breakfast, but Spencer stays in the living room, and Aria knows the reason why, so she stays, too.

"Is there something wrong?" she asks, and she's worried for a moment that she sounds almost too innocent because Spencer stares at her hard. But the worry fades when Spencer sighs and looks away.

"No, I was just surprised," she says, collapsing on the couch. "I didn't know – well, I didn't think you still had feelings for him. Or… or that he still liked you."

"It's not a problem, is it?" Aria asks lightly, smoothing her dress under her before she joins Spencer on the couch, trying not to remember a very different couch with a very different Hastings siblings. "I mean, I – I know it's fast, after Ezra, but I… "

She trails off, too used to lying to be sure of how to express her very real feelings, but Spencer doesn't seem to notice.

"You like him," she fills in helpfully, and her smile's not entirely true but it's not entirely fake, either. "That's fine, Aria. I'm happy for you."

Aria raises an eyebrow at her and asks quietly, "Is this about Toby or Jason, Spencer?" and she doesn't get an answer, but she reaches over to hug Spencer anyway. The lies she had planned to spin about Toby are about to leave her lips when her phone vibrates in her coat pocket.

Spencer pulls back and asks in a shaky voice, "Is that – is that A?"

Aria pulls her phone out and has to bite the inside of her cheek to avoid giving anything away when she sees the text message on her screen.

_Don't hurt yourself, Aria. – J_

She presses delete quickly and shakes her head, mumbling, "It's Jason," and excusing herself for the bathroom maybe a bit too suspiciously, although Spencer doesn't notice. Aria almost wishes she would.

-:-

_I won't. – A _

-:-

If a text message was supposed to reach them before the day's end, it never did. Slowly, the players of the game start to shift.

* * *

**a/n:** oh my god i don't even know what this is it's late and i was having a jaria situation that's it that's my excuse i'm sorry! if you read this far, please review? i'll love you lots if you do!

and **DON'T** favorite without reviewing, please and thank you.


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